Performance Appraisal & Performance Management

Performance Management - Why Doesn't It Work

Performance Management - Why Doesn't It Work is part of our Public Sector Manager White Paper Series. The series is designed to explore issues of interest to public sector managers in a short, concise, and thought provoking way. Designed as a "quick read" (about 58 pages), it presents an overview of the use of performance management and employee appraisal, identifies reasons why many such systems don't add value to the organization, and offers some alternatives to traditional methods.

Forward - Introduction (click to read) 

Chapter 1 - Traditional Performance Management - The Theory (click to read) 

• Overview 
• What Is Performance Management Supposed To Accomplish? 
• What Does Performance Management Assume About Organizations & Performance? 
• Is There A Downside To Performance Management? 

Chapter 2 - Performance Management - The Practice  

• Frequency of Planning & Review 
• On Executive and Management Performance Management 
• Managers On Appraisal 
• Employees On Appraisal 
• On Training & Career Development 
• On Participation & Goal Setting 
• Assessment of Performance Management In Practice 
• Why Does Performance Management Fail? Summary 

Chapter 3 - The New High Performance Organization  

• Introduction 
• The New High Performance Organization 
• Conclusion 

Chapter 4 - The Effectiveness Enhancement System  

• Introduction 
• Establishing Requirements 
• What Effectiveness Enhancement Is NOT! 
• Summary 
• Effectiveness Enhancement System Requirements Summary Sheet 

Chapter 5 - Enter The Customer - Designing Your System  

• Introduction 
• Step 1 - Defining Your Customers 
• Step 2 - Defining Your Own Needs As A Customer 
• Step 3 - Identifying What Your Supervisors Need 
• Step 4 - Identifying Needs of Employees 
• Step 5 - Bringing It All Together 
• Step 6 - Consider Other Players 
• Step 7 - Do It! 

Chapter 6 - Innovative Ideas  

• Introduction 
• "Using Your Head" System 
• Bi-Directional Enhancement 
• Quality Service Guidelines Model 
• The Group Appraisal Model

Book Introduction 

Following is the Introduction for our White Paper entitled Performance Management-Why Doesn't It Work. The book is approximately 60 pages.  

Introduction To This White Paper  

This is the second in a series of Public Sector Manager White Papers, and is designed to help managers develop their knowledge and understanding of topics important to public sector management success.  

Our topic this time is performance management. We must tell you up front that this is not a step-by-step guide to making performance management work in your workplace. Our experience has been that a step-by-step, lock-stepped approach fails more often than not.  

What you are going to find in this White Paper is a challenge to conventional thinking about performance management. While it would have been far simpler to have written a conventional guide about performance management, this would only have amounted to supporting a process that has failed organizations, managers, and employees. More important, my own experience and those of managers and employees would have been ignored.  

Background  

Since we are going to discuss issues that may contradict traditional ideas on the topic, it is important that you understand what amounts to a seven year journey that has shaped my thoughts on the matter.  

When I joined the Civil Service Commission of Manitoba as a design consultant, my first task was to re-write a course called Setting Standards of Performance. This course was part of a series of courses designed to help managers implement performance management. I laboured at this task for some time, researching, and talking to people to become acquainted with the principles of performance management. In the end I managed to re-write the course to address some training concerns and to make it more "friendly". Then, I went out to teach it.  

When I sat in my office, doing the re-design, everything made sense to me, since above all, performance management is a logical, rational process. However, when I had to teach it to others I found that there were often times when I could not deal with specific questions posed by attendees. I was grateful when another trainer took over responsibility for the training. He, at least, seemed to be much better at phrasing those thorny standards of performance. I assumed that my inexperience was the source of my difficulty. I was never sure.  

The provincial government had developed a performance management policy, and an ill-fated manual that eventually found its way into the dungeons of the Department of Finance. The Civil Service Commission had trained hundreds, probably thousands of managers and supervisors in performance management.  

But everywhere I turned, I heard the sounds of failure. In one of my courses, I asked participants how many had had a performance review within the past year. Three people raised their hands. Sixteen sat immobile and one said "What's that?" In my organization consulting role, I would, on occasion have to ask a manager about their performance management system. More often than not, the manager would respond that such a system was in place. When asked about the details it was apparent that the system wasn't used. Sometimes a manager would admit there wasn't one at all and "we need to get one sometime".  

That matched my own experience as an employee. Working for three different directors, across six years, I had two performance reviews, and one was conducted by the ADM (don't ask).  

It was obvious that something was wrong, but what? I knew that I was seeing almost no indication that performance management was alive and well, despite investment of training and the development of a government wide policy REQUIRING it.  

I worked on a consulting project to design a department wide performance management system, and while this helped bring some issues to the fore, it provided no answers, only more questions.  

It has only been recently that some of the pieces have fallen into place. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think I know some of them. I only was able to uncover some of the issues through contact with ideas that helped me put performance management into a wider organization context. Work by Crosby, Deming, Rosabeth Moss Kantor, Tom Peters and Bob Waterman helped to supply the raw material for what you are about to read.  

A Preview  

From my experience and those of other managers and employees, I noticed the following:  

• Generally, managers and employees don't really like performance management. 
• Managers don't do it regularly 
• Paradoxically, many who didn't like it or do it thought that it was a great idea in principle (but they still didn't do it). 
• I could find no relation between the use of performance management and organizational success. Use of traditional performance management did not guarantee success, and some organizations that didn't have much of it at all seemed just fine. 

• There must be something wrong with the concepts underlying performance management. 
• Traditional performance management no longer fits what we might call the new vision of the effective organization. People see it as irrelevant, or rarely helpful. 
• It is impossible to find a formula for performance management that will work each and every time. When performance management works, it is a result of highly developed management and inter-personal skills, not the system. 
• In many settings traditional performance management is a waste of time. 
• There must be a better way. 

Robert Bacal 

To discuss your needs call us at (613) 764-0241 or email us at ceo@work911.com 
 

This site is presented by Bacal & Associates as a public service. CEO, Robert Bacal is author of the two books listed above on performance management and appraisal. Bacal & Associates can advise companies as to how to go about modifying their performance management systems to "cut the crap", and get them to work, and to use them to create work partnerships. We also do conference speaking on a number of topics related to why performance management systems fail, and what to do about it. You can contact us at ceo@work911.com, or by phone at (613) 764-0241.